Fools and their futile appeals

Parallels between the soft evils of the modern UK or US and the monstrous twentieth century dictatorships do not usually appeal to me for reasons I need not rehearse. However I think that in this post Tim Newman has made an acute psychological comparison.

12 comments to Fools and their futile appeals

Even if the leaders of statism really were saints – statism still would not work, because it can not work.

As for the terrible evil of “Social Justice” (and the envy it is based upon) I have commented on the site.

I am depressed (more depressed than normal) at the moment.

The people of Chile can see the failure of statism in Argentina (and in Bolivia and Venezuela and in….) so they are about to COPY this failure.

And modern “educated” (read brainwashed) Americans are the same.

For example, every speech of the recently elected candidate for Mayor of New York City was a mixture of irrational ravings and savage evil – and the people responded by voting for him (by 73%).

The Social Justice (“government exists to help people” “the rich are evil”) ideology they are taught (by the entertainment media as much as by the schools) is that powerful – it trumps both empirical observation (that big government does not work) and reason (which shows WHY statism does not work).

When it fails in New York City (which it will) – will the public just blame the person they elect?

Better than blaming “Jewish big business” I suppose – but still no good.

The real people to blame (in New York City, Chile and everywhere else) are THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES.

In their hearts they know it is all folly (they really do) – but they let their envy (and their desire for someone else to take care of them) trump their senses and their reason.

Each man must be left to his own devices to care for himself and his, by both law and custom. If given any opening, the majority of humanity will steal rather than work. All of (at least) Western societies are ‘majority rules’ kleptocracies.
The minority can only carry their peers for so long and, I think, the last straw will soon be in place. At that point, it won’t matter who the ‘takers’ blame or how their petulant enablers emote.
Let the majority love their ‘One’ all they want. They follow him to their doom, dragging the rest along with them.

If given any opening, the majority of humanity will steal rather than work.

True, but not the whole truth. One of my favourite passages from Charles Murray’s What It Means To Be A Libertarian became so because it was first a favourite passage of Brian Micklethwait of this parish. Murray’s book isn’t free online, so I quote Micklethwait quoting Murray in Libertarian Alliance Political Notes No. 138. Emphasis added:

The relationship between tolerance and freedom is inherent. Intolerance is underwritten by government favoritism and violence. When people are free – meaning that they are also necessarily deprived of the use of force – they find ways to get along.

The view of human nature behind that statement is one that Adam Smith laid out two centuries ago in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It seems more persuasive, not less, as the modern behavioral sciences learn more about what makes human beings tick.

Human beings are social animals, Smith argued. We desire the approval of other people – “approbation,” in Smith’s language. Human beings are also self-regarding, pursuing their self-interest narrowly defined. In addition, we have instincts that lead us to value our own family’s well-being above that of people who are not family, to value our friends’ well-being above that of strangers.

Taken together, these qualities leave human beings with compelling motivations to cooperate, to be generous, and to be tolerant if they are deprived of the use of force. Taken together, these same qualities leave human beings capable of every kind of exploitation and atrocity if they are given access to the use of force.

The conclusion follows directly from the nature of force. If I can use force to get what I want, I can live two lives – exploiting other human beings to satisfy my narrowly defined self-interest and finding companionship and approval among the others who are my collaborators in oppressing others.

If I cannot use force, everything I get has to be given voluntarily. To satisfy my material needs, I must persuade other people to trade with me. To satisfy my needs for companionship, I must behave in ways that make others want me to be part of their community. In both cases I must offer something to others that they value at least as much as the thing that they give me. The link between freedom and tolerance does not depend on people’s perfectibility. It does not even require that human beings have a moral sense. It recognizes that, given the opportunity, human beings will exploit each other. Libertarians make this one simple claim, which can be successfully matched against mankind’s long empirical record: Deprived of the use of force, human beings tend to cooperate. Literally and figuratively, they live and let live.

Yes, they did ask for it in New York, whereas nobody could deserve the fate of Stalin’s victims. Which brings us back to the incredible persistence in delusion that human beings can display. As Tim Newman said in the link,

those from the middle ranks – sometimes even after they’d been tortured, processed, and shipped off to the camps – would labour under the delusion that Stalin was entirely unaware of what was going on, and they were caught up in some kind of rogue operation of which he would never approve.

Going back further, the peasants of the numerous Peasants’ Revolts throughout history usually believed that the king would be on their side if only he knew how oppressed they were.

Anyone, anywhere who supports a socialist party or policy except when chosing a lesser evil does not deserve not to starve to death. To support or adopt socialism is to reject co-operation and quite literally, civilisation, which is not a city, it is not electricity, it is not iPads and phones, it is not a welfare safety net, nor is it architecture, or art. It is a life in which relations between people are civli, based not on threat of or the use of force or war, but on peaceful exchange, it is a state of mind. To support socialism is to reject that which has made modern life possible.

Vote for higher taxes and welfare and you vote to consume capital of others and to drive us all back towards the Stone Age and beyond, however far you get, whether it is Venezuela 2013, Ukraine 1933 or the UK 1973, it is asking for destruction, so if you act in a manner contrary to your own long-term interest, you ought not to complain of the consequences.

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